I don't think anyone knows to what extent this will play out over the next decade. Yes, we are more reluctant to trust outsourcing production to China, and tensions over Ukraine & Taiwan highlight this rift between NATO nations and the East. But by no means has this stopped the inflow of goods arriving from China. I think that within industries that are deemed critical to national defense, especially semiconductors, these are going to be forcibly on-shored. Whether that spills over into "less critical" imports remains to be seen.
When it comes to on-shore vs off-shore production, not sure it can neatly be described as "good or bad". There are trade-offs. When we outsourced more production and manufacturing to China, our economy became more service oriented. We lost some valuable manufacturing skills in the labor force in the process and it takes time to ramp that back up. We are also saddled with far more regulatory and legal issues in the U.S. and that adds a significant burden to costs.
I think as article points out, on-shoring will contribute to CPI increases. Off-shoring offset some of the inflationary fiscal (spending from govt) and monetary policies (QE) of the past few decades. Ultimately goods will cost more. At the same time, it's likely that automation technologies get boosted investment. On-shoring may induce a robotics boom to counter act some of those higher costs (since the ROI will have increased). So maybe goods will be more expensive in short to medium term, but longer term, we may end up in a better place.
The more open questions are how the world grapples with a "multi-polar" world and whether that leads to kinetic war or active trade wars between U.S. & China.
When it comes to on-shore vs off-shore production, not sure it can neatly be described as "good or bad". There are trade-offs. When we outsourced more production and manufacturing to China, our economy became more service oriented. We lost some valuable manufacturing skills in the labor force in the process and it takes time to ramp that back up. We are also saddled with far more regulatory and legal issues in the U.S. and that adds a significant burden to costs.
I think as article points out, on-shoring will contribute to CPI increases. Off-shoring offset some of the inflationary fiscal (spending from govt) and monetary policies (QE) of the past few decades. Ultimately goods will cost more. At the same time, it's likely that automation technologies get boosted investment. On-shoring may induce a robotics boom to counter act some of those higher costs (since the ROI will have increased). So maybe goods will be more expensive in short to medium term, but longer term, we may end up in a better place.
The more open questions are how the world grapples with a "multi-polar" world and whether that leads to kinetic war or active trade wars between U.S. & China.